Sunday, April 28, 2013

How to cut the cost of housing by 25%.

The price of the average house in Britain (around £160,000) is artificially inflated to the tune of about £45,000 because of artificial constraints on the amount of land made available to house builders. That’s according to this Policy Exchange study. I actually did my own back of the envelope calculations BEFORE coming across the Policy Exchange study, and got much the same answer: around £45,000.

So . . cut the amount of bureaucracy involved in getting planning permission to build houses and the reduction in the cost of housing would make an owner occupied house unaffordable for many more first time buyers. Plus there is a saving in the form of fewer bureaucrats for taxpayers to pay for.

But that would be too simple. Instead, the British government has thought of a more expensive way of making housing more affordable for first time buyers: it’s to subsidise them.

So while one lot of bureaucrats are busy making it difficult to build houses, there is another lot of make it easier.

And if you object to more countryside being covered with concrete and housing estates, then answer this: which political party have you been voting for for the last ten or fifteen years? On of the main three parties: Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem? Then you’ve voted for a party which advocates or turns a blind eye to mass immigration, the main cause of the rise in demand for housing. You’re getting what you voted for.